


Je me souviens

by glasgow_blue



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-04
Updated: 2005-04-04
Packaged: 2018-09-15 07:31:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9225005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasgow_blue/pseuds/glasgow_blue





	

Written for [](http://lotrpschallenge.livejournal.com/profile)[**lotrpschallenge**](http://lotrpschallenge.livejournal.com/) #33: Tattoos

 

Title: Je me souviens  
Pairing: None. Just Bills and his ink.  
Rating: R, for language  
Word Count: 515  
Disclaimer: I. Am. Making. This. Shit. Up.  
Archive: Please ask.

 

Billy wakes up the next day a bit hung-over. There is a stinging soreness down by his ankle and his first thought of the morning is _Fuck me, I've been bitten by a spider!_

He's been worried about the spiders ever since Dom showed him a Whitetail that was living under his porch. Okay. Fine. The truth of it is that he's been worried about spiders since he was six, but that is neither here nor there.

He throws back the covers and leaps out of bed, scooping up a shoe along the way. All the better to smash the little punter.

But there is no spider.

What there is is a white gauze pad taped neatly to his ankle. Memory floods back. Laughter. Beer. The sting of a needle. Dom gone quiet and staring at a point in space somewhere between Billy's chest and the floor.

_Fuck me, I've gone and had myself branded like a cow._

He drops the shoe and sinks back onto the bed. Somewhere in the back of his head, his mum is wagging a finger. She's wearing the green print dress--the one she had on the night he was caught coating Margaret's head with petroleum jelly--and she's scolding him something fierce.

A week later, everyone else is showing off healed tattoos and Billy's is still red and sore from the glue on his hobbit feet. It hurts to wear socks. It hurts to sleep. And, Jesus, does it ever hurt to surf.

Nancy in Wardrobe tells him that it's cool and that, soon, hundreds of fans will want one, too. He pictures a line of people wrapped around the block in front of the parlor, all dressed in fake ears and rubber feet. He pictures their mothers, scrutinizing marked skin.

_And…fuck me again._

By the time a month has gone by, he's healed and the tattoo is largely forgotten. Billy catches a glimpse of it from time to time, but it no longer registers as foreign or offensive. It's just there, like his elbow or the freckle on his thigh. He stops thinking about it. Stops wondering whatever had possessed him.

It's not until he's alone in his flat in Mexico-- months and miles away from Middle Earth--that Billy finally knows why he went along with the plan.

His Gran had an English friend named Herbert who'd flown in the War. Took a hit to the tail section from a Messerschmitt over the Channel and, rudderless and streaming flame, Herbert crashed down into a field just atop the fabled Cliffs of Dover. A miracle, Gran said. A miracle marked by a scar running the length of his right leg, hip to toe.

"Scars," he told Billy once at the shore, "are souvenirs that you don't have to dust."

He stares at it anew; this little bit of ink in a foreign tongue. Call it a dustless souvenir. Call it a Rite of Passage. This number, marking him as one of a chosen few. This moment, captured forever on skin and memory and soul. Miraculous, really.


End file.
